Best Uses of Virtual Reality in Marketing to Fuel Growth

Porsche Virtual Reality Experience

Kategorie: AUTOMOTIVE

The Porsche Virtual Reality Experience app lets you go for a test drive at the world class Porsche Experience Center in Atlanta, GA in full 360°

Customer Reviews

Brilliant concept!

by DMargrave

I was pleasantly surprised to see what happened once I put this strange cardboard contraption together and viewed the app. Riding in the 911 Targa around the track with full range of vision was mind blowing!

Great!

by Prekillcrum

You can tell a lot of thought and work went into this. Cool look at Porsche cars and their facilities.

Amazingly Designed

by Sucker Punch™

A lot of work was clearly put into this, and uses the idea of VR really nicely.

Hamilton Island- Australia

This is a fantastic way for us to give our customers a unique experience of the Great barrier Reef and Hamilton Island, which we expect will translate into more people choosing to visit the Whitsundays for their next holiday destination.

The airline Qantas launched a pilot program testing out virtual reality goggles with first-class travellers in-flight and in its executive lounges.

The airline has partnered with Samsung to produce the new film, which was launched in select international lounges and flights. The latest 3D film plans also mark the extension of Qantas’ flight services to Hamilton Island from Melbourne. The airline will add two return flights per week and upgrade one of its current services between Brisbane and Hamilton Island.

Best Western

Best Westernis launching a VR feature that will allow customers to check out rooms, lobbies and amenities at its more than 2,200 locations, Skift reports.

This will allow potential customers to see what they will be paying for in addition to simply attracting a whole new market of consumers to the US hotel chain’s rooms.

The Phoenix, Arizona, based chain has been working with Google Street View to collect approximately 1.7 million photos of its North American hotels. Now, the company is combining the Google Street View technology with customized narration and music into the Best Western Virtual Reality Experience (BWVRE). By this summer, every Best Western branded hotel in North America will have implemented the BWVRE.

“Walking into a lobby or guest room leaves an indelible impression on what kind of experience will follow, but photos aren’t enough,” stated Best Western’s chief marketing officer and senior vice president Dorothy Dowling. “The Best Western Virtual Reality Experience transports consumers into our hotels and a customizable narration will guide them through the experience.”

BWVRE videos will be made available on a variety of platforms, including Google Maps, Google Search, YouTube and Facebook. They’ll also be developed in 8K resolution, the highest ultra-high definition video currently available.

While many marketers are feeling pressured to get into virtual reality, it isn’t quite clear if the public has totally bought into it or not. “Makers of virtual reality headsets think 2016 is the year of VR,” reports The Wall Street Journal.

“The dirty little secret about VR is that the hardware has run ahead of the content,” René Pinnell, head of Kaleidoscope VR, a production studio that hosts an international VR film festival, told the Journal. It is like the early days of the internet when consumers used dial-up to access content. Media like YouTube would have had a difficult time surviving in that landscape.

Virtual reality gear-makers and marketers are banking on the technology gaining wider usage across the marketplace — and doing their best to help the marketplace and demand for VR grow. The New York Times distributed a million VR Google Cardboard headsets to print subscribers and now has a thriving VR channel that features VR ads from a number of brands, such as TAG Heuer, MINI and GE.

The world already saw just how important VR is, this summer during the Olympic Games in Brazil. Virtual reality technology was used to film select events at the Games, including the 100-meter sprint (featuring Usain Bolt, the world’s fastest man) and the heptathlon. Viewers can watch the events live in VR and pick up other related VR content online, Information Age reports.

Some current examples of brands that are testing VR marketing to help their businesses grow, from awareness to growing market share to boosting their bottom lines, include eBay, Best Western, McDonald’s UK, Saks Fifth Avenue and Alibaba.

According to a recent report from Goldman Sachs on“Profiles in Innovation,”Virtual Reality will reshape the real estate business. In pursuance of the Goldman Sachs report, by 2020, some 130,000 real estate agents could be using VR. Perry Homes, one of the most respected home builders in Texas offers their customers an virtual reality journey trough their future homes.

Unlike with traditional videos and photographs, VR offers depth and space of the environment and gives users full control over their exploration of a home, moving at their own pace and seeing rooms from different angles. Users start with an overhead view of a property and can then navigate to the room of their choice, checking out the space virtually as they would at an in-person open house or tour. The 3-D tour can save time for both agents and potential buyers by helping the latter zero in on the properties they want to visit in-person. Likewise, it enables potential homebuyers to tour houses remotely without needing to travel to their future destination, as in the case of a cross-country move.

McDonald’s UKis using VR to help showcase its corporate citizenship and sustainability commitments.

In its new offering, it allows consumers to follow their food all the way from the farmland through the suppliers right up to the restaurant. Not only does this help customers see where their food comes from but also shows what kinds of jobs are out there in the UK food and farming industry, according to a press release.

The Follow Our Footsteps campaign to champion British and Irish farming uses the latest in virtual reality technology from Oculus and Samsung Gear and 360-degree video to tell its UK food story through the eyes of the people who grow, produce and prepare food for its UK menu. The goal is to increase engagement, spread the word on its commitment to farmers, and serve as a recruitment tool for its supply chain.

Follow our Foodsteps is part of McDonald’s Farm Forward initiative, a long-term program to address the challenges facing the sector. It’s supported by industry statistics showing that the UK food and farming industries are hungry for fresh talent across a vast array of areas including farming, horticulture, engineering and food development. According to the Food and Drink Federation, there is a need to attract 109,000 new recruits into the food industry by 2022 as the UK population is projected to rise by 4.4 million in the next decade.

McDonald’s UK brought together a collective of tech developers, young farmers and food experts, challenging them to use technology to give the public a real-life glimpse of how the food on its menu is made and where it comes from. The resulting VR experience, which travels across the UK throughout May, will transport consumers behind the scenes on some of McDonald’s UK’s flagship farms, factories and restaurants — all without having to physically be there.

The public is invited to virtually experience farming by donning an Oculus VR headset to play a potato harvesting game and a Samsung VR headset to experience a 360° video to transport them into various farming scenes.

Connor McVeigh, director of supply chain, McDonald’s UK, explained to Campaign: “As a nation, we have never been more food-focused. The eating-out market is growing but this passion for food is masking a lack of understanding around how food is produced and the vital role our farming and food industries play in growing, sourcing and producing quality ingredients.”

He added: “By bringing together tech developers with farmers and food experts, we have created an immersive virtual reality experience that will allow people to follow in the footsteps of farmers, suppliers and our crew, bringing the best of UK food production from the countryside to communities across the UK.”

“Our hope is that it will help build pride in British and Irish farming, challenge outdated stereotypes and celebrate the best of food and farming in the UK today.”

Secretary of State for the Environment Elizabeth Truss added: “McDonald’s is a fantastic example of the vision, creativity and innovation running through our food and farming industry today. As a nation we are now far more plugged into where our food comes from.”

Saks Fifth Avenue teamed up with MasterCard for a 360-degree VR video to show off 30 different beauty brands in its “Glam Gardens experience” as part of the #PricelessNY campaign.

Customers can stop at each Saks window to check out a different beauty brand. To interact with the video, web users can drag around the video with their cursor, while mobile users can drag a finger on the screen or pivot the mobile device.

Saks is using VR to bring 30 of “the most coveted beauty brands” to users around the world. A virtual camera leads the user on a journey through the Secret Garden from 50th Street to 49th Street.